Introduction

One of the unwritten (well, rarely-written) rules of management is that a significant part of your job is to grow the talent of your team members. It’s not just enough to measure their performance against the expectations laid out; much of the time, you want to be actively working to improve their skillset, their experience, and their abilities. To simply “caretake” your team without helping them get better is a huge opportunity wasted—and is likely to keep your own promotions and growth stagnant, as well.

Therefore, in this chapter we examine what it means to be a manager who actively undertakes the development and growth of their team, and who looks to improve your team members. Even if doing so means promoting them out of your team and into the rest of the company.